If u were writing FL2, what would u add?

w0dk4 wrote:

I’d urge you not to get sucked into trying to combine an RTS with a shooter, pick one genre and plough everything you have into making it the best it can be in that field of play.

It’s called being original. I do agree that you can easily lose focus when wanting to implement too many things at once, but I see no reason why you wouldnt want to be original and try to mix genres.
The critical point is always accessability. If you concentrate on making a shooter or an RTS but dont make it accessible, it will fail. But that doesnt necessarily have to do with mixing genres.

There’s a reason it would be original to mix these two genres, nobody has been able to pull it off in a multiplayer game. Single player, fine, like X2, but multiplayer, no way.

Essentially, as we all know, RTS multiplayer is a single map with a finite number of resources usually with a maximum of around four players, once the resources are gone, provided you’re not already dead, you will play to the last unit standing. Once you’re dead, you’re dead. You can’t log out of an RTS universe and come back tomorrow to continue your game.

You can’t have 256 players with infinite resources all marching an army around the battlefield, I can’t even begin to imagine the server required to handle the task of 10 of those players going into battle against each other, never mind 256. I would also imagine your average computer would scream and die a death if the units and environment had any amount of quality to them.

A shooter like freelancer is one man one ship, just like any FPS game really, you can throw a hell of a lot of these single units at a server or your average computer without any issues.

EVE is the only multiplayer game that’s done anything like it, in the sense that it features massive amounts of players online at the same time and battles over territory. But having said that it’s one man one ship all the same and there’s a huge universe where players can grow without getting stomped into the ground by corporations. Even with their considerable infrastructure, the servers have a real hard time when any large number of players decide it’s time to blow each other to pieces.

That’s just one small difference between the two genres that gives you probably your first massive problem, there’s a shed load more where that one comes from.

Sorry for double posting but this is a slightly different point.

We’re talking empires here right, lot’s of time invested in character development etc.

This belongs in an MMO environment where you pay for a guaranteed spot in a persistent universe.

If you’ve got a limit of 256 players per server, even if the model is feasable at that number, say I invest time on server 1 and build myself an empire, what happens when server 1 is full. How can I take that character to server 2 where someone else already occupies that area of space with their own army?

I can’t think of any way that could be possible, can you?

Essentially, as we all know, RTS multiplayer is a single map with a finite number of resources usually with a maximum of around four players, once the resources are gone, provided you’re not already dead, you will play to the last unit standing. Once you’re dead, you’re dead. You can’t log out of an RTS universe and come back tomorrow to continue your game.

Thats why its called a mix and not a combination.
You cannot simply combine two different genres, but you can mix elements of them both.

As regards this has never been done before, do you live under a rock?
Meanwhile, I know a dozen of games that mix FPS with RTS elements. The oldest game being Allegiance by Microsoft Research (www.freeallegiance.org).

You could always lay it out, explain your game model so I can understand exactly what it is you’re trying to achieve. I’ve really got a negative feeling about what I “think” you’re trying to do, but I could be misreading the situation. You’re a great guy who’s done many great things around here and I’d hate to not say I see a floor in something and let you just carry on regardless.

When I said 256 players, I did mean online not files. Building and grinding things out in the online world is usually reserved for MMO’s, persistent, where your character is always available to play on the same server. Imagine how confusing it would be having a few different accounts with empires scattered around various servers all at different stages of development, half of them might not even exist by the next time you log on, or at the very least look nothing like the way you left them. Do you see what I’m getting at?

I mean, “massively” means number large than FLServer lol. OK i made mistake, i don’t know MMO means Massively Multiplayer Online before if “Massively” must large than 256.

Purely FPS game is boring for me and i hate ALL RTS game…. Just try to make a Action mixed Strategy Game and that’s enough.

i’ll explain eve ships fitting mechanics as it’s not too big and other things i mentioned are sufficiently self-explanatory by their names (i think) %)

eve ship fitting (equipping a ship with modules) mechanics have less restrictions (or smthing) than FL, and that gives a lot more of different combinations (excellent and awful (darwin award fits) ones ;] )/

basically there’re only two restrictions:
1. ship resources: cpu and powergrid (pg). each module can eat up 0~100 cpu and 0~20+k pg.
2. slots: each ship has different number of high/med/low energy slots which are used by different groups of modules. quick breakdown:
high: guns, missiles, capacitor(energy) warfare, all kinds of probe launchers, remote repair mods, stuff like that.
med: all shield tank and capacitor mods (except 2 special types), all electronic warfare (EWAR) mods (there’re a lot of them, huge part of the game), active propulsion mods.
low: all armor tank mods, weapon upgrades mods (damagemods), some passive EWAR mods, cpu and pg boosting mods, passive propulsion mods.

and that’s that! no other restrictions at all. of course not everything is written here, i don’t think i know everything about eve fittings
there’re rigs, tech 3 subsystems fitting (modular ships), overheating, but they all are expanding not restricting the fitting system.

this allows things like 100MN AB Tengus when a battleship-sized afterburner is fitted onto a T3 cruiser-hull (Tengu being one of them) and makes nice things in hands of a good pilot.

compare this to the FL system where you just have to pack all the slots and have like 1-2 mods that you’re really considering to fit, because you have an AB slot for instance, and you can’t put some crazy EWAR there, you just go and buy the best AB, because you don’t want to leave that slot empty too. And you can’t switch you repair module (yeah, i know noone uses nanobots, but whatever) to damage mod. Or change your shield for some mod that increases CD velocity.
Well i guess you got the idea.

As for eve in general, i think everyone designing space games should try it. Even if you don’t like combat or ship control style (i didn’t for a long time) it’s just beautifully balanced and variable game mechanics.

ps sorry if i sounded too fanboy here, i just love the complexity of it %)

I wouldn’t use sur files!

They cause too much ruckus!

w0dk4 wrote:

As regards this has never been done before, do you live under a rock?
Meanwhile, I know a dozen of games that mix FPS with RTS elements. The oldest game being Allegiance by Microsoft Research (www.freeallegiance.org).

Very interesting w0dk4, I guess I was living under a rock because, I never knew of this before and can’t see how I’ve missed it? Thanks for posting this link. I think I will look into this a bit further.

Thanks again,

HK